


A Different After

by BeaArthurPendragon



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blanket Permission, Does Frank Save The Dog Or Does The Dog Save Frank, F/M, Five Years Later, Fluff, Max the dog - Freeform, Maybe You Have To Lose Someone To Find Them, Of All the Gin Joints In All The World, POV Frank Castle, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Where Frank Was During DDS3, Whump, kastle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 07:51:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17545658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaArthurPendragon/pseuds/BeaArthurPendragon
Summary: Sometimes he dreams about her, not Maria or Beth, but Karen. Sometimes out of nowhere he remembers that weak moment on the East River waterfront when he pecked her cheek, the brief warm brush of his lips against the soft hot velvet curve of her face. He remembers how a few strands of her hair broke loose in the winter wind and tangled in his eyelashes and eyebrows when he did. He remembers the clean soap-and-water scent of her, the wool of her coat damp with spray from the river, the cold sharp threat of snow on the breeze.She’d made him promise to leave New York and never come back. “It’s the only way, Frank,” she’d said. “We both know that.” He hadn’t asked her to come with him. He knew she’d have said yes.What if Frank didn't turn around at that stoplight in Michigan? What if Pete Castiglione got to be the man Frank always wanted to be?Mild spoilers for Punisher S2 and Daredevil S3.





	A Different After

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd.

 

Or maybe it goes like this:

He stops at that red light and his mind drifts back to Beth, the way it’s been doing all day whenever he allows himself to be still. Beth and her long brown hair like a thick waterfall of silk and her wry funny toughness and her stubborn spark of hope that things could still work out all right. Beth and her boy, making the best of a hard life, Beth working her ass off to make it a little less hard, Beth and the music she teaches because even after everything she still loves it, still wants to share it with the world. He wishes he’d thought to ask her to play for him.

If he turns around he could. If he turns around he could watch her run that bar like she owns it, like she owns the whole world, because that’s how you survive as a beautiful girl in a rough town, by making them believe—making them know—you could call all the fires of heaven down up on anyone who tries to get the better of you. It excites him more than he expected. Yeah, he could watch that all night.

If he turns around he could card his fingers through her long hair at the end of her shift and taste the whiskey and strawberries of her mouth and feel himself move inside her again. He hasn’t been celibate since Maria, but Beth’s the first one he’s had feelings for, the first one who was ever more than a bandage on a wound.

The light cycles green and then red again, and the cars behind him honk for a while, then just give up and go around. He barely notices them.

If he stays he and Beth could take Rex out for pancakes anytime the kid wanted them, and drive up to Detroit when the Redwings play the Rangers and eat way too much junk and shit-talk each other and for a minute or two it’ll be like having Frankie back.

Ah.

A truck honks behind him and he reaches out the window and waves them around.

He wishes he hadn’t told Beth his real name. She doesn’t deserve the burden of that secret, the pain that inevitably follows. If he turns around—if she lets him and he stays—she’ll have to keep that secret from Rex for the rest of her life, and she will, because she’ll do anything for her boy, but it’ll always be a foreign object wedged between them, a splinter she’ll always be afraid of worrying loose.

Making Beth carry the weight of his past is the best-case scenario. He doesn’t even want to think about what could happen if his past comes looking for him.

The light turns green again, and he drives.

* * *

He keeps going west. He’d been sticking to back roads and small towns all year, but now he decides maybe a city’s a safer place to wash up. Nobody even notices a newcomer in Chicago. He pays cash for a one-month sublet in Pilsen and gets a job as a bar back at a dive near the university where a lot of rich kids come on the weekends to pretend they’re slumming. The kids aren’t all bad, for the most part, just naïve about how much they have in common with the folks they’re pushing out of the neighborhood—the folks who come drink here in the afternoons and on Tuesday nights because life is short and a buzz is one of the few pleasures they can afford.

The work’s good because it’s exhausting—the hours are long and the bar is loud and smoky and Christ, kegs are heavy. But it keeps him strong and it keeps him nimble, and that helps him sleep better than any pill.

Sometimes he dreams about her, not Maria or Beth, but Karen. Sometimes out of nowhere he remembers that weak moment on the East River waterfront when he pecked her cheek, the brief warm brush of his lips against the soft hot velvet curve of her face. He remembers how a few strands of her hair broke loose in the winter wind and tangled in his eyelashes and eyebrows when he did. He remembers the clean soap-and-water scent of her, the wool of her coat damp with spray from the river, the cold sharp threat of snow on the breeze.

She’d made him promise to leave New York and never come back. “It’s the only way, Frank,” she’d said. “We both know that.” He hadn’t asked her to come with him. He knew she’d have said yes.

The sublet ends and he finds another, and then another, and before he realizes it, he’s been in Chicago for almost five months. He’s gotten his bartending license and a new job slinging beer at a brewery in Cicero, a famous one that gets a lot of tourists, and he’s making more than enough to live without dipping any further into the kitty Homeland gave him.

He starts to think maybe he should invest some of it, make it grow, and he briefly debates calling Lieberman to get his advice since he was so good at that shit. But he knows he can’t risk it, can’t risk reaching out, because then he’ll start asking about Sarah and wondering what book Leo’s reading now and hoping Zach’s starting to forgive his dad for leaving him. And then he’ll start to miss them and it’ll start to hurt and he can’t put that on David because David’s got too much hurt of his own to heal.

Instead, he opens an investment account online and does some research and picks a few highly rated mutual funds, and that, he figures, will be good enough for now. It feels weird to have an investment account after living on nothing but cash for almost a year. Inching, finally, into Pete Castiglione’s life. Pinocchio slowly turning into a real boy.

He hears the puppy before he sees it, a plaintive whine almost like a baby’s cry echoing off the walls of the alley he’s walking past with his groceries, and his heart stops. He drops the bag and hurries into the alley, trying to pinpoint the sound.

It’s coming from one of the dumpsters. He drags the metal door open and begins to dig. The puppy’s near the top, thank God, in a knotted plastic bag that it was able to tear open enough for air. Frank scoops the animal out of the dumpster and he wants to beat the shit out of something, anything, but the puppy’s shaking so hard in his hands that he manages to hold himself together long enough to tuck the little guy into his jacket.

He takes the puppy to a vet and the little guy’s in such rough shape that the vet wants to keep him for a while to regain his strength before giving him his first shots.

When he comes back a week later, the puppy’s so different that he can’t believe it’s the same dog. It’s like he’s been reinflated somehow. His coat is smoother and his eyes are bright and alert and he greets Frank with a cautious squawk but shies away when Frank tries to touch him. Eventually he allows Frank to pick him up, a look of blank resignation on his face. Frank’s seen that look before and his heart cracks a little.

The vet’s pretty sure the puppy’s a pit bull, and he’s older than he looks, maybe two or three months old. Hard to tell if he was a runt or just too starved from birth to grow the way he should, but he’s clear of parvo and heartworm and there’s no reason he shouldn’t have a long happy life with plenty of love and attention.

Frank names him Max.

* * *

The first thing Max does when Frank brings him home is run under the bed and refuse to come out. When Frank reaches under the bed to scoop him out, Max scoots as far against the wall as he can, shaking so hard that the tags on his collar rattle.

“Okay, little man,” Frank murmurs.

He goes into the kitchen and dishes out a plate of wet dog food and places it near the foot of the bed and waits. The puppy’s interested—he’s licking his chops, but one look at Frank lying on the ground staring at him and he ducks his head and tries to make himself as small as possible.

Frank backs off, moves to the sofa across the room, but after half an hour of this, Max still won’t come out. That’s okay, he decides. He turns on the TV to watch a Mets game. When he gets up to use the head an hour later, the food’s gone. He peeks under the bed just in time to see Max skitter back into his corner.

That’s a new problem because it’s only a matter of time for the dog’s got to do his business, and Frank sure as hell doesn’t want him doing it under the bed.

“Sorry, little man,” he murmurs and pulls the bed away from the wall.

Max takes off like a shot across the room and manages to worm his way under the sofa before Frank can catch him. When Frank lifts the sofa, all he finds is a puddle of piss and a small pile of turds. A small gray blur streaks across his peripheral vision, and he jerks his head around just in time to see Max diving back under the bed.

Frank sighs.

* * *

After that, Frank just decides to let Max set the pace. He’s a pit bull, and pit bulls don’t get second chances, so Frank knows that he’s can’t afford to stint on his training—but it’s clear that terror is all Max has ever known, and he can’t train Max if Max doesn’t trust him. So they take it slow.

The pissing under the sofa isn’t great, but he layers some newspapers and trash bags under there and at least that contains the damage, and he throws a dirty undershirt under the bed for Max to sleep on so he can get used to Frank’s smell.  

Two days later, Max allows Frank to watch him eat.

A day after that, he lets Frank get close enough to touch him. Not for long—the moment Frank’s fingers touch his fur, he’s back under the bed—but it’s something. They do that for a few days, and then one day Max lets Frank run his hand all the way down his back before darting back under the bed.

Next mealtime, he allows Frank to clip his leash to his collar. Frank loops the other end around his belt and walks away, forcing Max to follow him everywhere he goes. After a few minutes of slapstick skidding, Max gets it: He’s stuck with Frank, and Frank’s stuck with him.

Frank takes three days off work to reinforce it. When Frank sleeps, the leash gets hooked over the bedpost. When Frank showers, Max sits in the bathroom with him. When Frank cleans his guns, they sit at the table. When Frank watches TV, they sit on the sofa. When Frank makes dinner, he sits in the kitchen.

Finally, at the end of the third day, he tries taking Max off his leash. He runs back under the bed. Frank sighs, goes to the sofa and turns on the TV.

Twenty minutes later he hears the scrabbling click of Max’s tiny claws on the hardwood. A moment after that, Max is curled up into a tiny gray lump at the foot of the sofa.

“Good job, little man,” Frank says gruffly.

But even after he stops hiding from Frank, he hides from everything else. He hides from the ringing phone and slamming doors and sneezes and just about any loud noise on TV. He shies away when Frank moves suddenly or reaches for him too quickly and he snarls and bites whenever he feels cornered, which is more often than not. Walking him is a nightmare: The sidewalk is so full of menace he runs back and forth, snapping and growling and barking and lunging at every perceived threat within a hundred yards. He still pisses and shits all over the apartment and nearly tears out his claws with panic when Frank tries to teach him how to sleep in his kennel.

His landlord forces him to choose between Max and the apartment—and Frank chooses Max. He’s been in one place for too long, anyway, and he knows that working at the tourist bar, good as the money is, raises the odds of him running into his old life, even if just by accident. It’s time to move on.

* * *

He spends a few months in North Dakota working at a bar that mostly serves roughnecks from the gas fields. Between tending bar and teaching Max how to trust him, he doesn’t have time for much else.

Teaching Max how to be brave again is slow going. He’s taken to curling up next to Frank in bed at night, and at first he tried to veto that bullshit, but one night Max had whined so much that he’d finally caved in and let him up. Max had curled up right into the crook of his knee and fallen asleep right away. In the morning, Frank realizes it’s the first time he’s slept through the night since his family was murdered.

He lets Max sleep with him anytime he wants after that. Turns out to be most nights. He doesn’t mind.

Max also, finally, learns how to play. Frank had been trying to entice him with anything he could find, but he’d been too scared of all of them to go near them. But one evening, Frank had come home to find Max contentedly disemboweling a stuffed dinosaur squeaky toy.

Then, early one morning in late October, he wakes up to a strange bark, and sits up with a jolt to realize that it’s Max, standing on the couch with his front paws on the back, staring out the window, ears back. Frank grabs his gun out of the nightstand and creeps up low behind him.

“What is it, buddy?” he murmurs softly, so Max knows he’s coming.

But Max is too transfixed by whatever he sees to budge.

Frank laughs. It’s snow. Max is barking at snow.

* * *

Soon, though, all his old broken bones start to tell him in concert that he’s in no condition to endure a North Dakota winter, so in early November, he and Max pack up and head south.

They drive for three days, watch the snow give way to rain somewhere in Nebraska and then, finally to sunshine and green as he works his way down deep into Texas. But after a few weeks in San Antonio he knows he’s too close to the border, too close to the cartels. He can’t risk being recognized. That means New Mexico and Arizona are out, too, so he turns east, toward Louisiana.

He falls in love with New Orleans the minute he arrives—or maybe love’s not the right word for it, but there’s something about the place, the weird, angry, defiant pride of it that he feels a kinship to. He rents a house in Chalmette on a block so devastated by Katrina there are only two other people living on it, where he can let Max off his leash on a nice afternoon without scaring anyone, and he gets a job working second shift at a 24-hour bar near one of the oil refineries on the river.

Max thrives over the warm winter and so does Frank. Or is it Pete? He can’t tell anymore. They run together every morning along the river and stroll together through the neighborhood after work, every mile they put in together taking them another mile further from their old lives. Max doesn’t come up into the bed with him every night anymore—and eventually he stops altogether—but they both still sleep fine.

There’s a girl, Maureen, who works at the corner store next to the bar where he stops sometimes for groceries after his shift. They don’t date, really—they just wash up every now and again in the other’s bed, and they fuck and they talk and it’s nice. It’s nice. It helps.

An unfamiliar peace settles over him—in the right light, he could almost mistake it for contentment.

He’s in the bar when the massacre at the New York Bulletin makes the nightly news. He rushes into the office and locks the door and with hands shaking so hard he can hardly keep ahold of his phone, he texts a number he’d memorized but tried to forget.

PC: _You OK_

It’s almost three hours before she replies—three hours during which he tries not to just walk out of the bar right then and there and take off for New York anyway, never mind that it’s a 15-hour drive and if she’s not OK now, she’ll be beyond helping by the time he gets there. He knows it’s not Red immediately because even if that principled little fuck had seen the light and begun putting people down, he’d never hit a civilian. Nah, the mask was Red’s, but the man behind it wasn’t.

Somehow he gets through the end of his shift and he’s just getting into his van when a burst of texts arrive.

KP: _I’m not hurt_

KP: _It wasn’t him_

Then three dots pulse for more than a minute as she considers her next words. _I’m going to run_

His heart freezes over at that, wonders if she’s asking or just telling. He suddenly remembers that she’d turned into his kiss, just slightly, a question that always wondered if she’d wanted more.

Maybe this is his answer.

He takes a deep breath and texts her the address of a diner he remembers outside of Roanoke, Virginia.

PC: _This time tomorrow._

And then: _Keep your head down._

* * *

But she’s not there when he arrives. He takes a booth in the back with a good view of the door and waits. He eats, drinks coffee, reads the paper—he’s just another traveler on his way through town, killing an evening before he gets back on the road come morning.

The diner’s open 24/7 and he could wait all night, but there’s Max to think of, too. Reluctantly, he pays his bill and heads back out to his van. Max pops his head up happily as he approaches and Frank walks him over to a grassy berm between the diner parking lot and the motel next door to do his business.

It's there, right as Max is taking a dump on the berm, that she finally texts him.

KP: _Change of plan_

KP: _Not coming_

He texts back: _Are you OK_

Dots hover for a while as she considers her answer. Finally: _I will be_

PC: _What happened_

KP: _Tell you all about it over a beer someday_

PC: _Is it finished at least_

KP: _Almost_

Frank sighed and rubbed his face, disappointment seeping like acid down his body, hot tears welling. Christ, he hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted this—wanted her—until now. Until they actually had a chance.

PC: _I’ll hold you to that beer, OK?_

She doesn’t reply.

* * *

He’d cleared out his apartment in New Orleans just in case Karen wanted or needed to go somewhere else, so there was no reason to go back, but Roanoke feels like a crime scene now and he knows better than to stick around.

As soon as the sun rises, he and Max pile back into the van and he begins to drive north.

He’s not sure when he finally admits to himself that he’s known where he was going all along, but by the time he passes through Allentown and the highway turns east, toward New Jersey, he doesn’t fight it.

A few hours later, he’s parked around the corner from her place and perched on top of the building across the street from her apartment’s front door. Christ, it’s weird to be back in the city after all this time, totally alien and intimately familiar all at once, like slightly-off imitation of the world he used to know.

It’s late afternoon; she’ll be coming home from work soon because somehow the Bulletin has still been putting out a paper, even with half its newsroom slaughtered. That’s how he learns about the massacre at the church, learns that Fisk is free, learns that Murdock was, and then wasn’t, a wanted man, that the FBI agent who tried to testify against him to the Grand Jury mysteriously ate a bullet the night before. 

 It’s not even four in the afternoon but she’s already on her way home, and she’s not alone. Nelson’s hand is resting on the small of her back while Karen has her free hand in her purse at a slightly awkward angle that tells him she’s holding her gun.

They look awful—exhausted, stricken, angrier than he’s ever seen either of them—and he knows immediately that whatever Karen had planned to stick around for’s gone FUBAR. He knows he shouldn’t get involved, that he can’t afford to get involved, that he shouldn’t even _be here_ , for Chrissake, but here he is all the same.

They go inside and a moment later he sees the light turn on in her apartment. They’re moving around, talking. Karen pours them glasses of something and then looks up at the window sharply. He’s sure she’s spotted him somehow, but no—she’s just closing the blinds.

An hour later, a pizza arrives, and a few minutes after that, a black guy in a suit—police, Frank thinks, from the holster bulge beneath his jacket, probably Nelson’s buddy Mahoney. Nelson meets him at the door and they speak for about a minute before going inside. Forty-five minutes after that, a patrol car rolls up and parks right outside her building. The blinds go up a little and Karen looks out, sees the car, nods, and draws the blinds again.

Nelson walks the cop back out and they hug—a quick, brothers-in-arms hug Frank recognizes from the Corps—and the cop even gives him a weary two-finger salute before departing. He’s an easy guy to underestimate, but right now there’s a quiet ferocity in his face that leaves no doubt in Frank’s mind that when Foggy Nelson comes loaded for bear, you’d best get the fuck out of his way.

Nelson leaves an hour later, and Karen’s lights go out a few minutes after that—though there’s a glow in the living room that tells him she’s turned on the TV. He’s debating whether or not he wants to try to risk sneaking past the cops to see her when his phone buzzes. She’s calling him.

“Hey,” he says, surprised. “Everything okay?”

“Soon, I hope,” she says. She sounds as exhausted as she looked earlier. “Are you still in Virginia?”

“No.”

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s okay,” Frank says. “What’s up? You sound like you could use a friend.”

“I was hoping you could put me in touch with your buddy Micro.” Then, anticipating his question: “I’ve got a story I need to tell and I have to make sure the right people hear it.”

“Karen, whatever this is, let me handle it, okay?”

“No, Frank. We both knew this could happen. We agreed: You don’t come back, no matter what. It’s the only way.”

“Seriously, are you okay?”

“Are any of us ever okay?” she asks angrily. “I’m texting you a link to the video. You should probably destroy your phone afterward.”

“I’ll send you my new number.”

“You shouldn’t,” she says in a small voice.

“I know,” he says.

She hangs up before he can add, _Be careful._

His phone buzzes with her text. He sends it to Lieberman, texts Karen once Lieberman confirms he’ll do it, then crushes his phone beneath his heel. Once he gets back down to the street, he drops the pieces into a storm drain.

* * *

His next stop is a small cemetery in Queens. Max is thrilled to be free for more than a few minutes, running back and forth on his leash, grunting happily and sniffing everything in their path. Frank can’t help but smile.

Maria and the kids are at the top of a rise overlooking the city. Frankie would be 11 and Lisa would be 15. Funny how he always knows exactly how old his kids would be at any given moment. He can’t say the same about Maria—hell, he forgets his own age sometimes. (He’s 37 but feels like he’s twice that.)

He touches the words carved into each stone as if he hasn’t already memorized them completely. _Beloved mother, beloved daughter, beloved son_. Though there’s a space for him next to Lisa, he already knows it will never be filled with a stone reading _beloved father, beloved husband_. Karen was right all along: He can never come back to New York again. Not even in death. He kisses his family goodbye for the last time, and gets back into his van.

The traffic in Manhattan is unusually slow, even for a weekend, and when he sees ambulances and police cars peeling away from a tall building a few blocks up, he’s got a pretty good idea why Red wasn’t with Karen and Nelson that afternoon.

Stuck in traffic, with neither his old police scanner or his phone, he tunes his radio to the local news to hear if they’ve got the story yet. They do—but it’s sparse: Two Daredevils, one red and one black, fighting it out at Wilson Fisk’s surprise wedding in the penthouse of the Presidential Hotel. Over the next half hour, they update the story with minimal details—14 guests dead, dozens injured, red Daredevil was going after Fisk and black Daredevil seemed to be going after _him_. The only thing keeping him from grabbing his gun and abandoning the van to help Red is knowing that he can’t risk losing Max. So he sits in traffic and waits. When word eventually comes that Fisk’s been arrested, not killed, he’s got a pretty good idea who won.

Eventually the traffic begins to move again, although by the time he gets to the hotel, everything’s been cleared away.

He’d planned to get as far away from New York as he could that night, but barely an hour after he crosses into New Jersey, exhaustion hits him like a 50-pound kettlebell. He finds a motel in Totowa and sleeps for nearly 12 hours, Max snuggled up next to him in the bed.

Max is restless after two days in the van, so the next morning, Frank takes him to a nearby park with hiking trails for a good long walk. At the center of the park is a mountain—though Frank is pretty sure it’s just a very tall hill with an inferiority complex—and he decides to take Max all the way to the top.

It’s strange to think that there’s such a peaceful place this close to the city, but here they are, surrounded by trees just beginning to bud and birds just beginning to return from their winters down south, and dirt soft beneath his feet from a recent rain. As they work their way up the mountain, New York City spreads out distantly on the horizon and a thought surprises him: _He could live here_. Not just stay awhile, not just wait until he’s sure there’s no more fallout for Karen, but settle down. Put down roots. Give Pete Castiglione a chance to be the man Frank Castle always wanted to be.

* * *

He finds a job tending bar at a corner pub in Totowa called St. Paddy’s. It’s only as Irish as the neon shamrock in the window, but it’s a comfortable, unfashionable joint mostly populated by blue-collar regulars, with a jukebox filled with classic rock and funk and a local cover band that plays on Saturday nights. It’s the kind of place he always saw himself stopping at after work once he got out of the service and got himself a real job, though what that real job was he’d never gotten around to considering. Bar life agrees with him, though, so maybe that. Maybe he’s right where he was supposed to be all along.

Well, almost.

He finds an apartment a week later, walking distance from the bar. With his first paycheck, he takes his van to Ikea and treats himself to some new furniture: A sofa, a table, some chairs, and a bed. He hesitates for a moment when he’s asked what size mattress he wants, then makes a bet on his future.

“King,” he says.

He settles in at the bar, and after a year he feels like he’s been there all his life. Every now and then he has a nightmare, and his anniversary’s always hard and the kids’ birthdays are really hard, and that day in April, Christ, _that_ ’s the hardest of them all—but even so, he doesn’t think about his past as often as he thought he would.

He’d texted Karen his new number as soon as he replaced his phone, and the message showed it had been read, but she never responded. He’s kind of glad, actually. The silence helps him move on, and if he finds himself missing her too much, he’ll drive out to the mountain at night and hike to the top so he can see the city for himself. At night it’s just a wide, sparkling glow on the horizon, like a galaxy setting into the sea, and it’s good. Just knowing that she’s still out there, somewhere in that glow, that’s enough for him.

Another year passes, and then another. A few women share his bed from time to time, not quite bandages on wounds anymore, but no Beths either. Old Jimmy starts to talk about retiring, asks Frank if he’d want to take the bar over when he does. They negotiate a good price and that’s that. He keeps the name, keeps everything the same. No point in changing a good thing if it’s working, he reasons.

He never returns to New York. He talks to Curt and Lieberman a couple times a year, just to let them know he’s alive, but he doesn’t tell them where he is. (He’s pretty sure Lieberman could find him easy enough, though.) He keeps up with the New York news just enough to make sure trouble’s not coming his way, and that’s how he learns about Russo’s escape, and then eventual recapture by Nelson’s cop buddy, Mahoney. Every now and then he reads about Daredevil or, less often, some headliner of a case won by Nelson and Murdock, but it all feels so distant now. Pete Castiglione’s got nothing to do with that life anymore. 

He gets rid of most of his guns—now all he’s got is a pump-action filled with birdshot under the bar and a hunting rifle and .45 in a locker at home. He’s surprised by how relaxed he starts to feel without a sidearm on him at all times, without having to keep track of the thing every waking second, like a decades-old cramp that’s finally starting to release.

One Tuesday night in December an early-winter snowstorm’s blanketed the town in almost two feet of white. Only his hardcore regulars are there tonight, and he’s already decided he’ll close up as soon as they clear out. He’d spent a Sisyphian afternoon shoveling and re-shoveling the sidewalk in front of the bar as the snow stopped and started and stopped and started again, and he ain’t as young as he used to be. A hot shower and an early night sounds pretty good right now.

He’s back in the stock room retrieving a fresh bottle of Wild Turkey when he hears the faint strain of a familiar Earth, Wind, and Fire song play on the jukebox. His heart leaps with hope as it does every time he hears it, but he closes his eyes and wills it away. _Stop this_ , he tells himself. _She doesn’t even know where you are_. He’s been meaning to call the vendor to take that song off for years and he decides he’s finally going to take care of it in the morning.

He scans the bar as he returns anyway, and nearly drops the bottle when he sees her sitting at the bar alone. Her hair’s shorter now, not quite to her shoulders, and the last five years have hardened her face, etched lines into her brow and carved the corners of her mouth into a frown. But the minute she spots him, a bright, mischievous smile cracks across her face.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” she says. “Think I owe you a beer.”  

* * *

She’s done with New York, she tells him, done with all of it. Foggy’s in the DA’s office and Matt’s moved to San Francisco, and the day she locked the old office for the last time, she realized she didn’t feel sad at all—just free. Free to think about what _she_ wanted, what _she_ needed. What—and who.

She’d given herself a year to figure it out. “Truth is, I knew I was never going find the answer in New York. Not after—” she waves her hand vaguely toward the Presidential Hotel 25 miles behind her.

“What made you think you’d find it here?”

“I’m a PI,” she says with a wry smile. “And Pete Castiglione gets his cell phone bill sent to this bar. You might as well have sent up a road flare.”

He swallows his whiskey and leans forward on the bar, taking her hands in his with a gentleness that surprises them both. “Sometimes I think the only reason I bought this bar was so you could walk into it one day,” he says.

“Of all the gin joints in the world, huh?”

He ducks his head a little and smiles. “You know I came here to make a fresh start, right?” he says. “For real. That life’s behind me.”

“I know,” she says.

“But I’ll never be able to promise it won’t come looking for me one day.”

“As long as Fisk is still alive, I’ll never be able to make that promise, either,” she says.

“I’ll never let him hurt you again, Karen.”

“I know,” she says, reaching forward and touching his cheek. “Tell me something, though. Do you miss the life?”

He sighs, refills his glass, drinks it in one swallow, and meets her eyes. “Yes. Every day. Gave me purpose, you know? Being able to do what others wouldn’t. I miss that.”

“Then why’d you stop?”

He gestures around the bar. “Like I said--so I could have a bar for you to walk into.”

She doesn’t laugh. “The truth, Frank.”

“Pete.”

“Pete.”

“Truth is I met someone in Michigan who made me think I could have something different.”

She nods. “And where’s Michigan now?”

“Rearview mirror,” he says. “Just me and Max now.”

“Max?”

He pulls up a picture of the dog on his phone and spins it toward her.

She smiles. “He suits you,” she says.

* * *

Their first night together is a revelation: hungry and tender and eager and slow all at once. They explore every inch of each other’s bodies with their fingers and tongues, tracing scars and muscles and lines of bone. To taste her, to feel himself inside her is a prayer he thought he’d forgotten the words to.

Afterward they curl up together and try to stay awake as long as they can, like they’re a couple of moon-eyed teenagers who don’t want to be the first one to hang up the phone. They try to tell each other everything but neither knows where to start, so instead their stories tumble out in a haphazard jumble of anecdotes and observations that don’t really make sense out of context but which manage to give each of them a hazy half-light picture of the past five years.

By the time she finally falls asleep, her heart beating through her back against his chest, he realizes that they’ve spoken more words tonight than they have in their entire time knowing one another. He kisses her shoulder but she doesn’t respond, so he rests his head on the pillow and closes his eyes too, feeling her heart beat and listening to her soft, slow breathing, and reveling in the soft coconut scent of her hair, and eventually he, too, falls asleep.

She’s in the shower when he wakes up and there’s coffee already made and waiting in the kitchen. He’s tempted to join her, but he decides not to push. Instead, he feeds Max and takes him out for his walk, leaving a note for Karen that he’ll be back in 20. That’ll give her time to clear out in case he’s read this whole thing wrong, in case the morning’s shed light on a picture she’s decided she doesn’t want to see.

But when he returns with Max and a grease-slick bag of apple fritters from Schultzie’s, she’s still there. She’s sitting at his kitchen table in yesterday’s jeans and one of his flannel shirts, damp hair curling in waves around her face, drinking coffee out of the enormous mug that reads “World’s Greatest Asshole” that Jimmy got him for his birthday last year. Without makeup, her face has a shocking delicacy to it—pale as carved alabaster, flecked with golden freckles and set with translucent sea-glass blue eyes. His breath catches when they meet his.

“Got breakfast,” he said pointlessly, holding up the bag. “If you’re staying.”

She takes another sip of coffee and doesn’t look away. 

Then she smiles. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a comment made by Punisher showrunner Gordon Lightfoot in [this interview](https://www.cbr.com/punisher-season-2-beginning/): "I've always kind of said, you know, at the point Frank just retires and opens a bar, there's no show, so we do always have to find him a new fight to have."
> 
> Also inspired by the Milk Carton Kids' Michigan.  
>  _The clouds move over Pontiac skies_  
>  _Their silent thunder matches mine_  
>  _I know this feeling from long ago_  
>  _I wondered was it's gone? Now I know_  
>  _So when she calls don't send her my way_  
>  _When it hurts you'll know it's the right thing_  
>  _Michigan's in the rearview now_  
>  _Keep your hands where I can see them_  
>  _You took the words right out of my mouth_  
>  _When you knew that I would need them_  
>  _What am I supposed to do now?_  
>  _Without you_  
>  _Without you_


End file.
